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Forty-Hour Week Convention, 1935 (No. 47) - Uzbekistan (RATIFICATION: 1992)

Article 1 of the Convention. Forty-hour week – Averaging of hours of work – Overtime. In its previous comments, the Committee had raised some doubts as to whether certain provisions of the labour legislation were truly compatible with the principle of the 40-hour week established under section 115 of the Labour Code. More concretely, the Committee considered that section 123 of the Labour Code, which allows for the averaging of hours of work over a reference period of one year and also permits working days of up to 12 hours, might lead to excessively long hours and impact negatively on the workers’ health and work–family balance. In addition, the Committee noted that section 124 of the Labour Code, even though it sets daily and annual limits on overtime hours, does not define the circumstances under which overtime may be authorized and thus can possibly lead to situations that run counter to the social standard of a 40-hour week.

The Government’s latest report does not address these specific concerns but merely lists provisions of the Labour Code establishing shorter working time for certain categories of workers based on their age, state of health, the nature of their duties and other circumstances. The Committee wishes to draw once more the Government’s attention to Paragraph 12 of the Reduction of Hours of Work Recommendation, 1962 (No. 116), which suggests that averaging should be permitted only when special conditions in certain branches of activity or technical needs justify it and also Paragraph 14 of the same Recommendation which conveys the idea that overtime should be authorized only in limited and well-circumscribed cases. The Committee accordingly requests the Government to provide additional information on the extent to which recourse is made to the system of averaging of hours of work (number of workers and types of establishments concerned) and explain how such working time arrangements, or a broad authorization of overtime, may be deemed to be consistent with a policy of reducing working hours while maintaining the standard of living, as required under this Convention.